INNOVATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION POTENTIAL OF AN ENTERPRISE: SYSTEMATIZATION OF THEORETICAL APPROACHES AND SUBSTANTIATION OF THEIR INTERRELATIONSHIP

Abstract

The digitalization of the economy and the acceleration of scientific and technological processes significantly increase the role of innovation as a driving force of development. The ability of enterprises to ensure the required level of innovation-driven development is becoming one of the key factors in maintaining their competitiveness and adapting to dynamic environmental conditions. However, the opportunities for innovation-driven development of an enterprise are largely determined by its innovation potential, which provides the resource and functional basis for innovative transformations. These circumstances increase the importance of studying the essence and conceptual foundations of innovation potential, as well as systematizing the established theoretical perspectives on its role in ensuring the innovation-driven development of an enterprise. The purpose of the article is to conduct a comparative theoretical analysis of the definitions of “innovation potential” presented in the academic literature, to systematize the existing approaches to its interpretation, and, on this basis, to determine the nature of its relationship with the innovation-driven development of an enterprise. To achieve this purpose, the study examines existing scholarly views on innovation potential and its essence and systematizes them within four theoretical approaches: resource-based, functional, result-oriented, and systems approaches. Based on the synthesis of the identified approaches and the delineation of their conceptual boundaries, a theoretical model of the relationship between innovation potential and the innovation-driven development of an enterprise is developed. It is established that this relationship is cyclical and reproductive in nature. In the development process, innovation potential not only serves as a source of innovative changes, creates resource opportunities for their implementation, and ensures their practical realization, but also changes itself under the influence of the achieved results of the enterprise’s innovation-driven development. The findings can serve as a theoretical basis for clarifying the essence of the concept of “innovation potential” and identifying its specific characteristics in the context of the innovation-driven development of an enterprise.